Archive for April, 2009

You think cats are graceful as they navigate treacherous banisters and react with classical catlike reflexes? Well, I tell you they fly like ragdolls when they are trying to rub against you at 2:00am and you push them off the bed. They seem unaware of being annoying although they are more than happy to bite you when they are themselves annoyed. Cat’s are nice, in cages or pictures or with children.

Nightstands on the otherhand are good for being everything cats are not: stable, useful, rigid, and most importantly not annoying. Another thing a nightstand does well is stun the shit out of a cat flying by. I think nightstands might just have a mean streak that rivals mine although nightstands are more subtle about it. I guess you overlook the potential evil in a thing that holds lamps in just the right way to tie the room together.

Anyway, this news item has been a long time coming but the other day I pushed a cat named Marko off the bed and right into the nightstand (or as I like to imagine the nightstand moved to get a kick in). I hadn’t meant for the plush annoyance to be bodily hurled into furniture. I just wanted to get back to doing what I do rarely and that is sleeping. I felt bad for a minute before resuming my mission of rest. Ultimately it just makes me chuckle to think of the event now.

I don’t know if both nightstands are both so cruel, but the one on my girlfriend’s side of the bed shares my nasty streak and we’ve been good friends ever since.

So I can’t complain I didn’t get the opportunity
I know this girl who has been nothing but good to me
It’s amazing what a little love and support do to me
She twitches amusingly when she switches her mood for me.

I think she’s a cutie she thinks I’m gracious
But it’s always your own reflection that most needs a facelift
I don’t see her through the same critical lens
Or maybe I do and I’d do it again

I’m just saying it’s not that I’m forgiving
I’m for getting what I want, I keep her on the menu
I say when I’m confused so she knows I won’t pretend
to be more into than I’m into and I’m into get the hint boo.

It’s more fair to me if she sees the value there for me
I care so I take her there carefully
I don’t donate much so don’t call my love charity
Hold on if you can and bear with me

“Really? Is it your opinion that Dr. Golgecci is a necrophiliac? What do you think of the odds of me being more interested in your lifeless corpse when it comes to sex? Do you have these opinions about everyone?”

Chuck hadn’t really expected the Spanish Inquisition. He typically wrote rather sensational and often wrong headed fairly opinionated diatribes which he thought were entertaining. He was very fond of Holly all things considered. Sure her temper was a little trying at times but it existed because she cared. And honestly, that was something Chuck hadn’t experienced often enough. Probably my own fault, he thought.

Holly was right that Golgecci brought them together. In a moment of optimism, Holly submitted a cheerful essay answer to what she wanted in a lover. Tinkering with his own view of the cosmos, Chuck had done the same. It was weird how they had read the same books and the book conversation happened kind of as more of a hunch than a moment where they had to talk about something. As a moment, it might well have been perfect.

But can the instincts powered by a similar taste in fiction really indicate the level of compatibility Chuck was looking for? He wasn’t the type to let an issue lie. Nor would he be satisfied if he found on his deathbed that somehow he had settled before finding his unique path through life. But then, you don’t meet a Holly everyday, she’s the kind of person you want to see again tomorrow too. Still, if a wrench were ever found in the plans of Holly and Chuck, the wrench would belong to Chuck, the tinkerer.

Holly was loyal to the people who had benefitted her, to a fault Chuck would say. Golgecci doesn’t become a saint just because he matched Holly and Chuck’s email addresses. Chuck was grateful but skeptical. Chuck was always skeptical. And by the way, he thought to himself, don’t forget to look into Crow, Sylvester Crow. Some loony nearly killed the modern day Christ that was Golgecci. Don’t martyr him before I figure him out, that’s all I ask.

He looked up at Holly’s furious flushed face, which was just a tightened version of her worried flushed face or her horny face, also flushed. She probably wouldn’t want him to make all those connections between her genuinely different emotional states.

“You’re right, Holly.” And then he moved his hands reassuringly with the intent to stir up the same distraction in Holly as he was feeling right then. Golgecci could wait.

Most people who have taken the time to put up their own webform for any reason know that in roughly seconds you will get unsolicited links to all sorts of virgin sex girls cheap Microsoft products Adobe why pay more Obama messages. The actual content isn’t so significant as the mashed up link heavy collage of almost random words; they seem random but I get tons of these and the mashups seem to have a pattern.

Software Engineers make software. A true software engineer like any other truly passioned person is going to make software whether people buy it or not so long as the software engineer can. However, just like any other service, if the service has value the software engineer should be compensated for his work. Then someone comes along and pirates this software. Essentially, the owner is just not being acknowledged. When a software engineer can’t make enough money, the software engineer will turn to another trade and the flow of new software will stop.

These subjects connect. I make a website to express myself and to facilitate my readers. Immediately, an automated process seeks to take advantage of this. Someone makes a piece of software and immediately someone pirates it. The thing is, each of us is just building on a preexisting system. I didn’t invent the internet, programming languages, or pave the way in the writing community. I build on top of what was present and carved out my niche. Hopefully I did this in a mostly beneficial way, but there are dirivative consequences that can be hard to judge as just good or just bad. And also, whether the ultimate ruling is good or bad can often be the result of how shallowly the investigation stopped. Things are interconnected, and one cause doesn’t just have one effect. Things chain out and interact with each other.

Microsoft stole some code just like Apple did, or so I am led to believe in Pirates of Silicon Valley. I can’t say the world is a worse place for the software advances we have had over the past 10 years both from Microsoft and in response to Microsoft but I can see specific cases where companies with products I thought had value lost out. Ousting a dictator that we placed in power in our Gulf War II might just teach modern regimes that you can’t trust America to both smuggle you into power and support you. Maybe that in itself is a benefit even though I wouldn’t have paid the cost if I had the choice.

I feel like life has this sort of trade off all the time, and more than two variables tend to be involved so balancing the complexity of each choice is much more difficult than we might first imagine. We try to make the world safe and sustainable but we go head to head with urges that can’t or won’t be controlled in the present environment. In other words, we don’t just have gaps in our knowledge, we have gaps in our knowledge that lead to material consequences.

With this in mind, we need to divorce ourselves from the belief that there is a right answer because I think the moral and ethical high grounds come with the cost of obscuring what factors are really in play. If you punish criminals and criminals have a mental disease, then the criminals will be more likely to hide their symptoms when there is a curable problem. The cure doesn’t have to exist for this generation. At any point at which we have a cure, the benefit of the previously diseased people becomes indisputable because we needed them to come forth with clues.

So instead of asking the justice system to redress our wrongs, I would ask the justice system to provide justice by providing clarity. I don’t think it’s enough to just throw criminals into jail. I tend to think a criminal who is caught is either unlucky and innocent, stupid for being caught, or some form of insane for working outside of the acceptable behavioral patterns. It’s obvious we don’t want to treat innocent people as criminal. We need to edjucate our stupid people and we should be working to treat insanity.

You don’t know why people with different basic chemistry and different basic world view premises do different things. I don’t either. That’s the uncharted territory, I suggest we should pioneer.

Sylvester Crow struggled against the arms of his captors, his gun falling uselessly from his numb hands. He was frothing at the mouth in fury. The charged electric gloves of the police reduced Sylvester’s experience of the outside world to a warm swollen lack of sensation, the sense of something going dreadfully wrong eliminated by a spring-loaded injection.

Dr. Dream as the press liked to nickname Golgecci was visibly shaken and pulled himself together quickly to resume his statesman-like affect. “It must be more upsetting to live with an unsound mind than to be assaulted by someone with that condition,” he soundly proclaimed, earning additional respect for his quickly regained composure and courageous statment.

“People like him used to be thrown into federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison for attempted murder. Before that it was a capitol punishment of death to the criminal. The world has gone soft. Don’t you think, doctor?” suggested the sergeant on duty.

“Nonsense, sir. Although I very much appreciate you and your men’s interference on this matter, I’m very pleased we’ve moved passed such barbaric notions. Sure if a sensible man were to commit such a horrendous crime, then that man should be punished. But that relies heavily on the assertion that man has will enough to choose not to do so. No man in his right mind would make that choice. It follows immediately then, that this man needs help and upon being rebalanced, he might be reintroduced to society some day.”

The firelord was a different creature after he had met his love. The days grew shorter in all other parts of the world. Where she lived, the temperature rose considerably. Tempers flared quickly among strangers. Water rose in value. And the countryside became more desert and less lush. Wars broke out among neighboring governments as resources became harder to maintain.

These times were difficult for me, and I avoided as best I could the sight of the firelord. He was something I could never be. He burned so bright and hot that I became the cool shadow. I would envelope his love so that she would not burn so quickly from his visits. I would cling to the walls so that my home did not burn.

The other elemental lords came to him, some worried for him, and some worried for the people of the world. “Haven’t you noticed the suffering you have caused this world by your obsession?” they said. “Even the one you love suffers for this.”

The waterlady approached, adopting the most sensuous form she had ever assumed, so beautiful that she could silently lure men and lesbians to their doom simply by asking them. Her voice dripped suggestion. “There are those among us who would welcome your advance, firelord. A little steam is no bad thing.”

Nature admonished him. “My plants and animals wither under your neglect”. The lord of politics complained that with no reason left among men, there was no place for him. The moon stood back from this dispute, aloof as ever, simply watching the exchange.

The firelord held his tongue until a small island country was blown asunder as a dormant volcano suddenly raged with unprecedented frustration. The small governments, the wildlife, and any lovers that may have existed there were suddenly erased as lava covered the land and dust covered the sky.

Upon seeing this outburst, the elemental lords decended upon their fire brother and shackled him. “Until you can calm yourself, brother, we will fix you in the sky a safe distance from Earth and we will rotate the universe, so that all sides of the Earth may benefit from your warmth.”

The firelord understood their reasons and the futility of his interest in a fragile human. But as he struggled to cool his temper and so earn his freedom, the years which meant so little to him added up and she died old and warm and missed by me, even though I know she looked every morning into the heavens for something I could never provide. When the firelord remembers her passing, a new volcano rages and sunspots interfere with life on Earth. And then the firelord remembers the reason why he is fixed in the sky and struggles to calm himself.

And I did not die either. For every photon emitted from the firelord, I darken one place. The firelord’s proxy: the shadow.

I’ve seen the face of evil. I’ve rocked evil. Evil calls me when she has concerns. Naturally evil is a woman, naturally. Perhaps evil is a role, and evil is played by a different person with different qualities such as ethnicity, gender, orientation, or capability. But for me, evil is a woman.

When evil comes a knocking, she comes knocking on my door with her left hand. Evil is left-handed because evil is and always was slightly unnatural. When I hear that left-handed, tap tap tap on my door, it’s like a fwerking ringtone; I know it’s her.

Sometimes evil has me in her left-handed grip, and other times, I’m weilding her like a talisman that would make Sauron proud. Together, we create a race of artificial elf mutants called orcs to storm the western world from the east on a continent that looks a bit like Europe and so from Russia… with love. Weilding evil like a meme, I do what I can to perpetuate her, but she won’t be shared. She is my demon after all, and might not have the same effect on someone else.

These days, evil is struggling. She can only be left-handed for so long, but she refuses to change her ways. I don’t know if it’s sadder that evil is having difficulty feeding her devious urges or that any hope of doggy style has been reduced to a three-point stance. I just don’t know if evil can handle me hitting her from behind like a Democrat initiated troop surge.

But she doesn’t have to. I’m up front with evil and I miss her lefthandedness. Where is my familiar sense of dispair and my retarded president? I know she’ll be back and I’m almost looking forward to that left handed doortone.

A conjunction of the letter f and a modified derogatory form of work — werk, this word is used to convey the feeling of underappreciation, insubordination, or the general desire to have control over one’s own life.

Some Examples.

I’ve been sick, tired, and emotionally drained. I don’t feel like going, so fwerk. The last thing I need is some holier than thou owner explaining how I’m supposed to be the steward of all things worthy for $5 per hour, so fwerk.

“I just don’t trust Golgecci, that’s all I’m saying.” Chuck Underwood hated talk of dreams and hopes. Life was life and that’s what it was. You can want a room full of money with hot women in skimpy outfits feeding you scrambled eggs in the morning, but that wasn’t likely to happen. And for the guy it does happen too, that guy is probably gay and doesn’t appreciate it properly. Life had that ironic property. Chuck could agree to that.

“Are you doing that thing you do again?” Holly demanded. “That thing where no matter what I say, you’re not going to agree with it! Because Golgecci is the one that put our two names together in the first place and up until the present conversation, I would have said that I’m very happy with the results. And he’s earned his doctorate, Chuck. It’s Dr. Golgecci.” Holly wasn’t in the mood for this like she never was. Chuck would just come in and disagree with anything. It didn’t matter what the subject was. There was no institution too safe: religion, politics, or anything. “Also, our country is not trying to big brother us. Life is a hell of a lot better than 1984. Crime is down. People are being sent to the proper places for reentry into society. God Chuck, you’ve got me swearing again.”

“Look, Holly. I’m not trying to make you mad. You’re probably even right, like normal. I’m just saying that doing good things doesn’t prevent him from having an ulterior motive, and specifically a criminal ulterior motive. He’s been doing a wonderful thing, but disproportionately he’s been doing his wonderful things for members of the government or at least it seems that way. Everyday, there’s a new alderman, judge, senator, or pope saying how wonderful it is that Dr. Golgecci took the time to fulfill their dreams an others. But most people aren’t in the government. Most people are just like you and I and you don’t see that.”

“But Chuck, he helped us out. Maybe not everyone but he helped us. Frankly, I’m running out of patience and I’m going to bed. If you want to stay on this subject, can you do it quietly? I’ve got work in the morning and it’s a big deal tomorrow.” And with that she brushed off yet another wild idea Chuck came up with.

In tough economic times, people need a reason to hope. That is why Dreams Inc. was created, to give people that hope. Dreams Inc. was a small start up company with an internet based community outreach campaign. But no matter how many dreams came true, some dreams were always being snuffed out. Let’s raise the ratio, thought Dr. Golgecci the founder of Dreams Inc. Let’s make more dreams come true.

See, there was a pattern to many of the dreams people had. Just turning forty or fifty and in some cases as young as twenty-five and hitting the economic downturn people started to feel in addition to the pinch of their pockets that their dreams were never going to come true. They were never going to play on a Charlottesville stage. They were never going to hit a home run. They were never going to be heard by the government. They were never going write their magnum opus.

The world was quickly becoming censored and monitored. As privacy dropped, people tucked their dreams even further in the pockets of their souls even as science reduced the size a soul could be daily. And so some dreams were just being cast aside. This wasn’t the age of savages. There was no room for fancy, dilly dally, fanaticism, or rampant imagination. When the light and untrained parts of our minds worked well, things were fun and light and pleasant. But human nature had a tendency to murder, rape, and plot. Squelching American freedoms saves lives, period.

Some dreams were fulfilled easily when Golgecci processed enough dreams to find harmony between various dreams. Many people dreamed of music, and so Golgecci formed bands and sent out the proper information connecting wannabes of different instruments with similar genre preferences. He coordinated writers groups to help tease out those long lost magnum opuses. There were the nymphomaniacs, the xenophiles, the xenophobes, and the narrower minded people looking for more of their ilk. And he processed them with the swift determination reserved for each and every dream.

He fought for privacy from the government and won. Dreams weren’t meant to be government property. His work was a social safety valve. Also, many of the dreams were just as likely to come from unhappy members of the existing government as anybody else, and Golgecci made sure each official understood the amazing sensation of a dream come true. He litigated and lobbied a little more freedom into the American private life.

Crime plummeted, as drug possession and thought crimes could no longer be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But the government and the people were living their dreams and a high teenager or minimum wage worker was the least of their worries. As the police learned due process all over again, and the internal security agents relaxed, Golgecci killed a young woman and put her in his refrigerator fulfilling one of his dreams immediately and preparing to fulfill a couple more. Dreams are hard to come by, and harder still for a necrophiliac. But it is an amazing feeling to have a dream come true.